Topic, Focus, and Exhaustive Interpretation

2017 ◽  
pp. 63-82 ◽  
Author(s):  
Robert van Rooij ◽  
Katrin Schulz
Keyword(s):  
Exhaustive Interpretation

Pragmatics of Focus

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jon Scott Stevens
Keyword(s):  
Question Answering ◽  
Semantic Content ◽  
Pitch Accent ◽  
Natural Focus ◽  
True Answer ◽  
The Subject ◽  
Focus Marking ◽  
American Farmer ◽  
Minimal Information ◽  
Exhaustive Interpretation

Generally speaking, ‘focus’ refers to the portion of an utterance which is especially informative or important within the context, and which is marked as such via some linguistic means. It can be difficult to provide a single precise definition, as the term is used somewhat differently for different languages and in different research traditions. Most often, it refers to the linguistic marking of (i) contrast, (ii) question-answering status, (iii) exhaustivity, or (iv) discourse unexpectability. An illustration of each of these possibilities is given below. In English, the focus-marked elements (indicated below with brackets) are realized with additional prosodic prominence in the form of a strong pitch accent (indicated by capital letters). (i) An [AMERICAN] farmer met a [CANADIAN] farmer… (ii) Q: Who called last night? A: [BILL] called last night. (iii) Only [an ELEPHANT] could have made those tracks. (iv) I can’t believe it: The Ohioans are fighting [OHIOANS] ! The underlying intuition common to all these instantiations is that a focus represents the minimal information needed to convey an important semantic distinction. Focus can be signaled prosodically (e.g., in the form of a strong pitch accent), syntactically (e.g., by moving focused phrases to a special position in the sentence), or morphologically (e.g., by appending a special affix to focused elements), with different crosslinguistic focus marking strategies often carrying slightly different restrictions on their use. Example (i) evokes a set of two contrasting alternatives, {‘American farmer,’ ‘Canadian farmer’}, and the meaning ‘farmer’ is common to both members of the set. That is, within this evoked set of alternatives, ‘farmer’ is redundant, and it is the nationality of the farmers which differentiates the two people. Example (ii) exhibits a similar property. One of the standard theories of question semantics represents questions as sets of possible appropriate answers. For (ii), this would be a set of propositions like {‘Bill called last night, ‘Sue called last night,’ etc.}. As with (i), there is an evoked set of meanings whose members share some overlapping semantic material. Within this set, the verb phrase meaning ‘called last night’ is redundant, and it is the identity of the subject that serves to differentiate the true answer. Example (iii) demonstrates a relationship between focus and certain words like only. The sentence means something like ‘of all the animals who might have made these tracks, it must be an elephant.’ As with (i) and (ii), this involves a set of alternatives: the set of possible track makers. That the sentence serves to single out a unique member of this set as being the true track maker makes the subject an elephant a natural focus of the sentence. Finally, in (iv), we see that focus on ‘Ohioans’ is being used to contrast the semantic content of the sentence with some preconception, namely that Ohioans are unlikely fighters of Ohioans. Examples (iii) and (iv) point to more specific uses of focus in different languages. In Hungarian, so-called identificational focus, which is marked syntactically, requires an exhaustive interpretation, as if a silent only were present. And in some Chadic languages, a meaning of “discourse unexpectability,” as in (iv), is required to mark focus via syntactic or morphological means.

scholarly journals Reasoning with Partial Orders: Restrictions on Ignorance Inferences of Superlative Modifiers

2016 ◽  
Vol 26 ◽  
pp. 489
Author(s):  
Jon Ander Mendia
Keyword(s):  
Experimental Evidence ◽  
Ordered Set ◽  
Epistemic Possibility ◽  
Partial Orders ◽  
Partially Ordered ◽  
Totally Ordered Set ◽  
Exhaustive Interpretation

The present study is concerned with Ignorance Inferences associated with Superlative Modifiers (SMs) like at least and at most. Experimental evidence will be presented showing that the Ignorance Inferences associated with SMs depend on their associate: when the associate of an SM is a totally ordered set (e.g. a numeral), the exhaustive interpretation of the prejacent must necessarily constitute an epistemic possibility for the speaker. However, when the associate of the SM is partially ordered, the exhaustive interpretation of the prejacent can, but need not constitute an epistemic possibility for the speaker.

scholarly journals Non-canonical Very as a Degree Modifier of NPs in English

2020 ◽  
Vol 9 (3) ◽  
pp. 1
Author(s):  
Marcus V. R. Vieira ◽  
Luciana Sanchez-Mendes
Keyword(s):  
Semantic Analysis ◽  
Lexical Entry ◽  
English Speaker ◽  
Starting Point ◽  
British National Corpus ◽  
The Difference ◽  
Degree Modifiers ◽  
Scalar Properties ◽  
Exhaustive Interpretation ◽  
National Corpus

The aim of this paper is to investigate the meaning of constructions with a non-canonical use of very inside NPs and to propose a unified formal semantic analysis for the degree modifier very. We adopt the notion of scalar properties and take as a starting point the fact that very is a typical degree modifier that boosts the degree of open-scale adjectives (e.g. tall) (cf. Kennedy & McNally, 2005). In this work, we focus on what we name non-canonical very: the modification of very on NPs (e.g. the very house John lived in). Our methodology consists of three major steps: firstly, we selected sentences with non-canonical very from The British National Corpus. Then, we selected sentences from five American and British novels published in the 19th and 20th centuries, comparing the sentences with their translations into Portuguese. Based on a first analysis of these sentences and on Matthewson’s (2004) methodology, we proceed to controlled elicitation of contexts with the participation of a native-English speaker of Wales. Data collected present definite DPs and complex NPs, what supports a proposal that consider modification of a scale that is closed and contextually dependent. We argue in favor of an analysis that gives a uniform lexical entry to very and assume that the difference on interpretation of canonical and non-canonical modification is due to scalar properties of the modified predicate. Canonical very modifies lexical open scales whereas non-canonical very modifies contextual closed scales of precision and produces an exhaustive interpretation. The study reveals the importance of logical scalar properties for the semantic investigation of degree modifiers.

Exhaustivity and bare numeral phrases in Mandarin

2020 ◽  
Vol 22 (1) ◽  
pp. 111-165
Author(s):  
Cheng-Yu Edwin Tsai
Keyword(s):  
Close Relation ◽  
Subject Position ◽  
Restricted Distribution ◽  
Exhaustive Interpretation

Abstract A well-known generalization about bare numeral phrases (BNPs) in Mandarin is that they tend to require the existential verb you ‘have’ when in subject position, but there are some notable exceptions. This paper concentrates on the data cited by Li (1998) and proposes an Exhaustivity Condition according to which a subject BNP is felicitous if and only if it is interpreted exhaustively. It is shown how this condition generalizes to all the constructions under discussion, while at the same time they each belong to a particular type of quantificational construction or another (cumulativity, scalar focus, sufficiency, or conditional). I argue that the close relation between Mandarin subject BNPs and exhaustivity not only explains the restricted distribution of the former but also enables us to account for their so-called quantity readings in terms of exhaustive interpretation. Comparisons of the proposal with previous approaches will also be discussed.

scholarly journals On the status of exhaustiveness in cleft sentences: An empirical and cross-linguistic study of English also-/only-clefts and Italian anche-/solo-clefts

2015 ◽  
Vol 49 (1) ◽  
pp. 1-56 ◽  
Author(s):  
Anna-Maria De Cesare ◽  
Davide Garassino
Keyword(s):  
Syntactic Structures ◽  
Linguistic Study ◽  
Fine Grained ◽  
Semantics And Pragmatics ◽  
The Status ◽  
Exhaustive Interpretation

AbstractThe goal of the paper is to shed new light on the semantics and pragmatics of cleft sentences by discussing the exhaustive interpretation typically associated with these complex syntactic structures. Based on a fine-grained analysis of the contexts in which “exhaustiveness” can be cancelled as well as reinforced by English

scholarly journals The American Jeremiad: A Specifically American Genre

2020 ◽  
Vol 15 (4) ◽  
Author(s):  
Vladana Ilić
Keyword(s):  
American Film ◽  
Social Changes ◽  
Cultural Hegemony ◽  
National Goal ◽  
Current State ◽  
Political Speeches ◽  
Part Structure ◽  
Rhetorical Form ◽  
Exhaustive Interpretation ◽  
The Ideal

This paper offers an overview of a "specifically American genre" – the American jeremiad, whose origins lie in the Puritan political sermon and which, with certain historical and cultural modifications, exists to this day. This overview, like most studies of this rhetorical form, is based on the work of Sacvan Bercovitch, who established it as a genre and offered the most exhaustive interpretation of its structure and meaning to date. The American jeremiad aims to homogenize the American community, and to steer it towards a common national goal, as reflected in its three-part structure: an evocation of the ideal/the ideal state of the community, a denunciation of its current state, and an affirmation of the goal and a vision of progress. As, according to Bercovitch, the American jeremiad despite historical and social changes retains the cultural hegemony of the symbol of America, later studies have tested this thesis by looking at political speeches, public addresses, American films, etc., through the concepts of the contemporary secular jeremiad, historical, Afro-American, film jeremiads, etc., and almost without exception conclude that this symbol, in one form or another, is alive and well.  

scholarly journals Coordinating questions: The scope puzzle

2020 ◽  
Vol 29 ◽  
pp. 562
Author(s):  
Morwenna Hoeks ◽  
Floris Roelofsen
Keyword(s):  
The Other ◽  
General Constraints ◽  
Interrogative Clauses ◽  
The One ◽  
Exhaustive Interpretation

This paper introduces a new puzzle concerning the interaction between questions on the one hand, and conjunction and disjunction on the other. It shows that a conjunction of two polar interrogative clauses is interpreted so that each conjunct involves a polar question operator and the conjunction takes scope over these, whereas a disjunction of two polar interrogative clauses can only be interpreted as involving a single polar question operator scoping over the disjunction. In other words, two full-fledged polar questions each including their own question operator can be conjoined, but cannot be disjoined. We argue that the source of this contrast is semantic (rather than syntactic, pragmatic, or other), and we formulate two general constraints on question meanings which can each account for it. The first, based on Fox (2018), requires that the resolutions of a question are related in a particular way to the cells of the partition that the question induces on the context set. The second requires that the exhaustive interpretation of a consistent resolution of the question is never inconsistent. We leave open which of these two constraints is to be preferred.

Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document